[HN Gopher] Fedware: Government apps that spy harder than the ap...
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Fedware: Government apps that spy harder than the apps they ban
Author : speckx
Score : 320 points
Date : 2026-03-30 18:16 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sambent.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sambent.com)
| ethagnawl wrote:
| The names of the offending apps on the cards need much more
| emphasis.
| pickleglitch wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember when people actually took the Hatch
| Act seriously.
| fhdkweig wrote:
| Why is every part of this website animated, and part of the text
| is backwards? Am I the only one who sees it this way?
| explodes wrote:
| If the webmaster notices this, the squares aren't great on
| mobile.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| I think they are supposed to be like cards that flip over and
| you see what's on the back.
| john_strinlai wrote:
| > _This thing also has a "Text the President" button that auto-
| fills your message with "Greatest President Ever!" and then
| collects your name and phone number._
|
| when is the onion going to go bankrupt? it has to be soon, i
| imagine. no way it can compete with reality at this point.
|
| (the rest of the article is a bit too depressing for me to
| comment on at the moment, other than saying "wow, gross")
| malfist wrote:
| It's ming boggling just how....cringe... these billionaires
| that want to run the world are. Makes you wonder if the
| personas that seek billions are correlated strongly with mental
| illnesses.
| bigyabai wrote:
| They are perfectly aware of their own optics and do it
| because you can't escape it. See Elon with his cringeworthy
| Twitter takeover that still hasn't collapsed, Larry Ellison
| buying up the media or Tim Cook gifting the gold trophy to
| Trump.
|
| Nobody has the guts to boycott them anymore. Billionaires
| know that you depend on them for news, social media and
| smartphones too.
| malfist wrote:
| > still hasn't collapsed
|
| Which is why he's playing a shell game with xAI "buying"
| twitter and then SpaceX "buying" xAI
| bigyabai wrote:
| Well... it worked. The shareholders were made whole, Elon
| got his vanity project, and the only people who got the
| short end of the stick were the loss-leader Twitter
| addicts. From a game-theory perspective that's a pretty
| impressive political polemic to achieve with purely
| private capital.
|
| When the dust settles the only person to blame is Jack
| Dorsey, who spent his halcyon years on Twitter pumping
| Bitcoin and looking even more coked-out than Elon. If
| people can't move on to better platforms then yes, they
| are doomed to eternal monetization by warring moron
| techbro tribes.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I think that's what bothers me the most about the last
| couple years. These ultra rich people are just brazenly
| being scumbags and there is nothing anybody can really do
| about it. I imagine this is what people felt like in the
| middle ages when their King was going senile.
| scottyah wrote:
| I think you're wrong and it's worse- there are a lot of
| things that many people can do about it, it's just that
| they choose not to.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Both are true. Some things _can_ be done and are simple
| /healthy, like escaping social media. Others are
| fundamentally much harder and not worth the
| risk/trouble/time.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| I do not think it is the money that made them terrible. I
| know all sorts of terrible people that would do the exact
| same things. The only difference really is they do not have
| the money to execute on those ideas.
|
| Money does not make you a good or bad person. It just makes
| you more of who you are already.
| malfist wrote:
| I specifically did not say money makes them mentally ill,
| but rather the type of person that seeks to hoard so much
| wealth that they have billions is correlated with mental
| illness.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the type of person that seeks to hoard so much wealth
| that they have billions is correlated with mental
| illness_
|
| Do we have any actual evidence of this? I know plenty of
| exorbitantly wealthy people who aren't hoarding anything,
| they just didn't sell their piece of the closely-held
| business they started, and they spend their time skiing,
| reading, travelling and taking care of their friends and
| family.
| john_strinlai wrote:
| > _Do we have any actual evidence of this?_
|
| to be fair, the original comment by malfist started with
| " _makes you wonder_ ", so i dont think they are
| asserting this as fact.
|
| > _I know plenty of exorbitantly wealthy people who
| aren't hoarding anything,_
|
| some people would see this sentence as contradictory, and
| they would suggest that the thing those exorbitantly
| wealthy people are hoarding is money.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they would suggest that the thing those exorbitantly
| wealthy people are hoarding is money_
|
| And I'd say they're literally wrong. They may be hoarding
| _capital_. And yes, some wealthy people _do_ hoard money
| _per se_. But outside the Epstein class there are lots of
| people we just don't hear about because they aren't on
| social media talking about how rich they are. Because
| while it's fun to postulate that the rich have mental
| illnesses, it's documented that social-media addiction
| causes them.
| john_strinlai wrote:
| > _They may be hoarding capital._
|
| while this distinction may be important to you, i dont
| think it really changes anything about malfists
| question/point.
|
| > _Because while it's fun to postulate that the rich have
| mental illnesses, it's documented that social-media
| addiction causes them._
|
| and cigarettes cause cancer. not sure what this has to do
| with the conversation, but yeah, social media is bad
| (smoking, too).
|
| (please note: i am not arguing for or against what you or
| malfist have said, just thought there was a little
| something lost in translation re: you asking for evidence
| after a conversation that started with "makes you
| wonder")
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _i dont think it really changes anything about what
| malfist question /point_
|
| Of course it does. Turning capital into spendable or
| transferable wealth takes work. Plenty of rich people are
| just enjoying their lives in the same way retirees do.
|
| > _not sure what this has to do with the conversation,
| but yeah, social media is bad_
|
| I'm saying the folks we tend to get upset about being
| rich at are also the rich who are prominently on social
| media. The problem isn't that they're rich. It's that
| they're on social media so much. I think there is a
| genuine argument to be made that even Elon Musk would
| have been a better-liked person, maybe even a better
| person, if he never got on Twitter.
|
| > _thought there was a little something lost in
| translation re: "makes you wonder"_
|
| Perhaps. And appreciate your clarifying for them. In 2026
| I'm just sceptical of the "just asking questions" bit,
| particularly when it comes to cultural tropes. (And for
| what it's worth, my query for a source was genuine. I'm
| always down to change my mind on a loosely-held belief.)
| malfist wrote:
| There's a hell of a difference between a multimillionare
| who has a successful business and a billionare.
|
| The difference between a person who has a million dollars
| and a person who has a billion dollars is about a billion
| dollars.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _a hell of a difference between a multimillionare who
| has a successful business and a billionare_
|
| Yeah, I'm saying the ones worth hundreds of millions to
| low billions who aren't on social media are, in my
| personal experience, often fine people. The ones I don't
| like are the ones on social media, but that's also true
| of the folks worth a few thousand dollars.
|
| Plenty of billionaires are assholes. The world's GDP is
| over $100 trillion. That's going to produce diversity
| among the rich.
| malfist wrote:
| And who are you to personally know enough billionaires
| intimately enough to absolve them of any guilt they might
| have earned hoarding enough wealth to reach that level?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _who are you to personally know enough billionaires
| intimately enough to absolve them of any guilt_
|
| I'm not absolving anyone. I'm saying I know good people
| who are also billiionaires who most people have never
| heard of. The billionaires I've heard of I tend to
| dislike. But I think the correlate is the fame, not the
| wealth.
|
| > _guilt they might have earned hoarding enough wealth to
| reach that level?_
|
| This is where the hoarding metaphor breaks down. If you
| build a company, is it hoarding to not sell your stake
| off to a private equity firm?
|
| Because practically speaking, those are their choices.
| Hold it, manage it and live off the income. (They all
| donate most of their incomes, but that's neither here nor
| there. You can be a good person even if not
| philanthropic.) Or sell it to a private equity firm and
| then have a pot of money to stare at.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| Of course the money doesn't make them terrible. Being
| terrible makes them money. Lots of money. There aren't
| really other ways of obtaining so much money, which is why
| if you see someone that has that amount, they should be
| viewed with suspicion.
| fhdkweig wrote:
| To get moderately rich doesn't require a special personality
| type, but obscene wealth requires breaking laws and asking
| forgiveness later (throwing lawyers at the problem). Not
| caring who you hurt while reaching for a goal is a trait of
| sociopathy.
| psadauskas wrote:
| Right? If I had enough money that I could make a serious dent
| in local or even global poverty without noticing the change
| in my lifestyle, and I just... chose not to, I have no idea
| how I could sleep at night.
| csallen wrote:
| Huge numbers (billions) of people have enough money to make
| massive changes to the lives of those less fortunate than
| them, but don't, and prefer instead to make incremental
| upgrades to their own lives. New rugs, more savings, first-
| class airline tickets, eating out a few more times a month,
| etc.
|
| This is just human nature.
|
| People who are at wealth level x tend to say, "I can't
| believe that people at wealth level x+1 aren't more
| generous!" all the while ignoring their own lack of desire
| to give generously to people at wealth levels x-1 and
| below.
| conception wrote:
| Aaron Swartz had a good take on this -
| http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/handwritingwall
| nostrademons wrote:
| I remember wrestling with this in my therapist's office
| when Aaron died. I had known him tangentially - we hung
| out in the same IRC channels, and had several mutual
| friends in the Cambridge/Somerville techie crowd that he
| would hang out in person with.
|
| As a college student and young adult I had always envied
| his fame, his intelligence, his money (post-Reddit
| acquisition), and the strength of his convictions. And
| yet, in that moment in early 2013, he was dead, and I was
| working a good job at Google (and this was 2013 Google,
| when it was still a nice place to work doing things that
| I could generally approve of). And he'd died doing the
| stuff that I wanted to do but had been too chickenshit to
| actually carry out.
|
| I think that this illustrates why the world is the way it
| is. All the true altruists are dead, killed for their
| altruism. It is _adaptive_ , in a survival sense, to
| think of yourself and your own survival and not worry too
| much about other people. Ironically, this is what my
| therapist was trying to get me to realize.
|
| But I think this also goes back to the GP's point. When
| people at wealth level x give to people at level x-1, it
| doesn't raise the people at x-1 up to x. It brings the
| person at x down to x-1. There are more people at x-1
| than x, after all; you could give everything you had away
| and mathematically, it would lower your net worth
| significantly more than it would raise theirs. And of
| course, it doesn't do a damn thing about the people at
| x+1. Why can't _they_ donate instead, where their wealth
| would do an order of magnitude more good?
|
| There actually do exist people who are like that: they
| would rather spread their wealth around the people at
| wealth level x-1, joining them at that level, than raise
| themselves up to x+1. I've met some; most poor people are
| far more generous than rich people are. That is why they
| are poor. But then, it doesn't solve the problem of
| inequality, they just disappear into the masses of people
| at level x-1.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| RIP
| unfitted2545 wrote:
| I also think this could be a symptom of an economically
| unequal society (which creates a higher range of x), and
| is a big reason why it's important to fix it, on top of
| the extra money to the state.
|
| So thats essentially communism right? Is human nature
| incompatible with communism or is capitalism incompatible
| with human nature?
| nostrademons wrote:
| Communism doesn't eliminate power relationships, it just
| papers them over with politics and bureaucracy instead of
| having them legible with prices and wages.
|
| In the American golden age of capitalism from ~1950-1970,
| the top marginal tax rate was 90%, and so you didn't have
| CEOs get paid more than about 3x the median worker,
| because the government would get it all. Instead, they
| got perks. Private jets. Positions at the company for
| their kids. Debaucherous holiday parties. Casual sexual
| harassment of secretaries.
|
| In Soviet communism, all production was centrally planned
| by government bureau run by party members. It was not
| uncommon for these bureaus to make mistakes, leading to
| severe shortages for the population. Nevertheless, these
| shortages never seemed to really hit the party members
| responsible for making the plans. Power has its perks.
|
| And that's also why reforms attempting to reduce
| _economic_ inequality need to focus on _power_ rather
| than _money_. There have been a number of policies that
| _do_ meaningfully raise standards of living for the poor:
| they 're things like the 13th amendment to the (US)
| Constitution, the 1st amendment, the jury trial system,
| free markets, anti-monopoly statutes, bans on non-
| competes, etc. What they all have in common is that they
| _preserve economic freedom and the power to make your own
| living_ against people who would seek to restrict that
| freedom and otherwise keep you in bondage.
| scottyah wrote:
| We can also tell because anyone who can take the time to
| use a computer with internet to write a comment in well-
| formed English is already comparatively wealthy or
| connected enough to provide food and housing for dozens
| of people.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| If you had that amount of money you would also be a
| sociopath. It's a precondition.
|
| Good news is that you would sleep fine at night. No matter
| how destructive your existence was, and how much of a net
| negative you were to the world, you would still think very
| highly of yourself.
| phatskat wrote:
| Trump has largely not had that kind of money. He's had a
| _lot_ of money, many many times more than most, but by all
| accounts except his own, those numbers are much lower than
| he likes to brag about. Well, they were - there's been a
| troubling amount of money going out of the federal
| government that isn't well-accounted for under his reign.
|
| He had the kind of money that can hire expensive projects
| on trust that payment in full will be rendered, but only
| kept his money by often not paying out.
|
| As with all things Trump, even up to the new ballroom not
| having a front door despite the massive staircase, his
| wealth is more in appearance, and less in actual
| assets...or was. Of course, someday maybe we will know the
| true extent or shortfall of his bank accounts
| malfist wrote:
| Elon tweeted that he'd fund ending world hunger if someone
| presented him with an actual plan to do that. UNESCO did.
| Elon did not act.
| dnautics wrote:
| can you verify that the UNESCO plan would have ended
| world hunger?
| Den_VR wrote:
| It was a 6.6 billion dollar plan to alleviate famine in
| 43 countries for one year, so, no.
| keybored wrote:
| I don't get puzzled that the criminal doesn't use his ill-
| gotten gains for pro-social causes. Why would a person ever
| use anti-social means to acquire funds for pro-social
| goods?[1]
|
| This is not too disimilar from the case of the billionaire.
|
| [1] Excepting some Galaxy Brain philosophies like Effective
| Altruism
| fhdkweig wrote:
| You aren't the first one to notice the correlation. It is a
| heavily studied subject.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wealth+and+sociopathy
| th0raway wrote:
| It comes down to two things. One is the well documented issue
| of how, when you are that rich, you are treated differently,
| and how that will ultimately modify your behavior. The other
| is the prerequisites to get to the job. Chances are you
| aren't fully self-made, receiving no investment. From
| convincing investors, to having immense faith in a project
| that cannot be obviously good, as otherwise you'd be building
| what already exists, to the personality to handle the road
| upward.
|
| This second effect happens in all kinds of places where you
| have to jumps througha lot of hoops to just get to get there.
| Every hoop discards candidates, and promotes different
| things. Sometimes in ways that make sure that nobody capable
| of attaining the job is fit to actually do it well. You can
| see the issue all over the place, once you track people's
| careers. Sometimes things that should be disqualifying for a
| role are actually requirements in practice.
| kevincox wrote:
| > To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of
| getting themselves made President should on no account be
| allowed to do the job.
|
| > - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
| jakeydus wrote:
| The people who would, shouldn't. The people who should,
| won't.
| SimianSci wrote:
| - Own a monopoly - Inherit your fortune - Run a criminal
| enterprise
|
| Using just these three filters alone, you encompass more
| than 99% of all billionaires in existence. The amount of
| billionaires who do not fit into these categories can
| barely occupy a family sized vehicle.
|
| The criteria here suggesting that there is a specific
| sociopathic personality requirement to being a billionaire
| as each category can be argued as harmful to societies.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I've been thinking that you can divide businesses on two
| axes, Scalable
| - Many customers
| | Short-term/ Ponzi Scheme | Monopoly
| Long-term/ Transactional
| -------------------------------------- Relational
| Contracting / | Consulting /
| Retail etc | Therapy etc
| | Non-scalable - Few
| customers
|
| And mathematically, only businesses at the top of the
| graph are capable of generating a billion dollars. Hence,
| if you are looking to be a billionaire, the path lies
| either through a Ponzi scheme or through a monopoly. Both
| of them, in their most pure form, are illegal, and the
| challenge in the business model is to execute on them
| while staying just barely on the right side of the law.
| rhet0rica wrote:
| Trump specifically seems to hew awfully close to the symptoms
| of a long-term cocaine user. The hard drift into self-
| congratulatory vanity parallels that of Charlie Sheen during
| a certain infamous interview, for example, and at least two
| people (Howard Dean and Carrie Fisher) identified him as
| having compulsive sniffing reminiscent of a cocaine habit
| during debates prior to his first election.
|
| Remember that Trump is not a first-generation member of the
| upper class; as a nepo baby, he was born out of touch and has
| spent his whole life falling deeper into bizarre social
| bubbles and media silos that were tailored by his ancestors
| and peers to reassure them that they're doing the right
| thing. In theory plutarchs should be receiving world-class
| education from private tutors, but being arch-Conservatives
| by definition, these teachers are invariably out of date on
| mental health, and would be forbidden from teaching it even
| if they had modern material.
|
| Because of this isolation the ultra-wealthy often have
| certain very uneducated traits around self-esteem--which can
| paradoxically seem like the result of poverty. They do not
| have access to DARE or Sesame Street to give them the
| confidence not to take drugs when pressured, they've never
| seen Mister Rogers, their biological parents were always off
| running a business empire, and they have no surrogate figures
| because their nannies probably get fired at the drop of a
| hat, even for defending the child's interests.
|
| Ironically, American republicanism makes this worse; in a
| planned aristocracy, parents internalize the belief that
| their children deserve "the best" because they are meant to
| be "the best", but without that noble lie, there is no
| pressure to create a positive environment for the next
| generation of tyrant. To make matters worse, these families
| never start off with healthy values to begin with--which
| produces a founder effect of regressive masculinity that
| magnifies everything else I've just mentioned.
| literalAardvark wrote:
| I think they are, and strongly.
|
| The drive to achieve that level of success often comes from
| weaponized poor self esteem.
|
| Well adjusted individuals just chill out after a few million
| and work on whatever is fun/important for them.
|
| Only rarely does this also happen to be something that can
| take you from 10M to 1B. (and if it can it would take a lot
| of work you can't be bothered to do unless it's some core
| value like helping the poor beat malaria)
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Trump saying recently that he hates hanging around
| successful people and prefers losers because he doesn't
| want to listen to other people's stories really speaks to
| the poor self esteem angle
| ashton314 wrote:
| Most don't seem to think about morals or quality at all:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/introspection-
| andr...
| keybored wrote:
| Aren't sociopaths _strongly_ overrepresented among the
| powerful?
|
| (Assuming that) It's a bit astonishing that we discuss things
| like that, go huh, and then go about our day. Effectively
| acquiescing to rule-by-personality disordered.
| cl0ckt0wer wrote:
| They've pivoted to good news. It's more absurd.
|
| https://theonion.com/breaking-all-of-world-s-problems-solved...
| fhdkweig wrote:
| It is still bad news. The last sentence refers to things
| working out for everyone except the reader:
|
| "Sources went on to report that, due a minor oversight that
| also occurred as you slumbered, your student loans must still
| be repaid in full and are now subject to a highly predatory
| ballooning interest rate."
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I remember when I was young seeing videos of North Korea, of
| audiences always giving rapt standing ovations and many people
| fake fainting, and I always thought "How dumb and stupid does
| everyone have to be to carry on this absurd, ridiculous
| charade."
|
| I don't wonder anymore.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Do these posts just get upvoted due to the graphics/animations? I
| find this site incredibly difficult to read with things re-
| playing as you scroll up and down and the articles I've read from
| here are often light on details. The graphics seem very AI-
| generated (overlapping text and other little issues) which makes
| me think the whole thing is from an LLM.
|
| While this post does have some interesting information, I have to
| wade through distracting animations that seem "off" which makes
| me questions all of it.
| fhdkweig wrote:
| I can't read any of it, but the other comment's descriptions
| sound like the new mandatory Russian Max app, so it isn't
| without precedent.
| beejiu wrote:
| I didn't even realise it was an article. I thought the grid
| thing at the top was just an index page linking out to other
| pages.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Speaking for myself unless I know the site and like how they do
| things, my default these days is a reader view.
|
| It helps a lot!
|
| In this case it helped me lose interest in the article within
| about 20 seconds.
| tolerance wrote:
| > Do these posts just get upvoted due to the
| graphics/animations?
|
| I don't think so. It's more likely that they're upvoted as a
| signal-boost; convene here to talk about bad government tech.
|
| Some submissions are less about the subject matter than they
| are about providing a space to talk about only the subject in
| general. I've found this to be the case when the content is AI-
| generated.
| raincole wrote:
| It's upvoted because the message is "the administration bad."
| Which, heuristically, is the correct take most of the time.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| I can only presume it's designed for people who's attention
| will not be kept by sparse but fitting graphics and a well
| written article.
| zymhan wrote:
| Yeah, this site has been posted a few times recently, and there
| is something just very odd about the site design and the
| writing.
|
| For example, this post seems unhinged at best:
| https://www.sambent.com/the-engineer-who-tried-to-put-age-ve...
| drnick1 wrote:
| You could not pay me to use any of these apps. All of my own
| devices run some form of Linux (Debian for servers, Arch for
| desktop/laptop, GrapheneOS on phone). I generally refuse to use
| non-free software, the main exception being Steam on a dedicated
| gaming rig.
|
| I really don't understand why everything has to be an "app." My
| phone only has a handful of apps, including two web browsers,
| through which other things are accessed. No app gets access to
| location, sensors, the camera, or the microphone.
| graemep wrote:
| Apps can gather data, and there are lots of things that
| requires apps now.
|
| Edit: I meant apps can gather data.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Apps obviously gather data. In fact, on common phone
| operating systems, they tend to have access to an insane
| amount of information, including what other apps are used,
| hardware identifiers, information related to Google/Apple
| accounts and more.
|
| As for things "requiring" apps, I am happy to do without
| those. If I cannot access something through a website on a
| device under my control, I will not use it. No convenience is
| worth more than my freedom and privacy.
| graemep wrote:
| Oops. I meant apps can gather (more) data.
|
| The inconvenience is considerable. In the last few days I
| had the choice of use the app or drive 20 mins each way
| plus park, walk and possibly queue. Required (UK)
| government ID verification. The issued my new passport
| without that!
|
| It is often more costly to not use an app, not just
| inconvenient. My daughter had to use the bus company app to
| get (much cheaper) monthly ticker to get to school.
|
| I use few apps, keep location turned off, do not use
| wallet, etc. but there is going to be more and more
| pressure to use apps.
| nickburns wrote:
| Can you offer some examples?
| saadn92 wrote:
| The closing point is the one that should get more attention --
| every single one of these apps could be replaced by a web page.
| And from a product standpoint, there's really only one reason to
| ship a native app when your content is just press releases and
| weather alerts: you want access to APIs the browser won't give
| you. Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot
| triggers -- none of that is available through a browser, and
| that's by, unfortunately, design.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Background location, biometrics, device identity, boot
| triggers -- none of that is available through a browser
|
| Most browsers do in fact offer that level of granularity,
| especially for PWA usecases [0].
|
| And from an indicators perspective, having certain capabilities
| turned off can make it easier to identify and de-anonymize
| individuals.
|
| [0] - https://pwascore.com/
| nickburns wrote:
| Fingerprint? Yeah. Deanonymize? No.
|
| There's a considerable difference. And doing whatever one can
| to mitigate the former shouldn't be discouraged by falsely
| equivocating the latter.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Nope. Actual deanonymization.
|
| You will of course need a couple additional threat intel
| feeds because what is provided via the browser itself isn't
| enough, but third party data vendors along with threat
| intel vendors are fairly cost effective.
|
| I've seen a couple _actual_ live demos of deanonymization a
| couple years ago - it 's a capability that has existed in
| the Offensive Security space for a couple years now. And
| the company I'm alluding to is already live in Japan and
| Israel.
| graemep wrote:
| Exactly what big businesses do, and governments think what
| businesses do is good practice. Fore everyone to use an app.
|
| The UK's Companies House (required for anyone who is a director
| or has a shareholding of more than 15% etc.) requires a Onegov
| ID now. They offer a web version with a scan of a photo ID
| (passport or driving license). I tried it. I thought one of
| those would work. Apparently the web version needs to ask
| security questions (reasonable, as the app used NFC to read
| your passport) but despite the vast amount of information the
| government has on me (to issue those IDs, to collect taxes,
| etc) it cannot do that, so i had to either use the app or go in
| person to a post office in a different town.
|
| Similarly I got an email from Occado saying that if I used the
| app I could change orders without checking out again. If I do
| it on the website i have to checkout again. Why?
| themafia wrote:
| > access to APIs
|
| It's mostly static data. Just publish it under a URL that won't
| change. Then we could actually cache and archive it.
| shit_game wrote:
| The APIs in question are client-side iOS and Android APIs.
| Most of these apps are just WebViews wrapped in spyware,
| which is the point. It doesn't matter that most of the
| content is static or already uses browser-native APIs for
| functionality like forms, gating access to this information
| behind a surveilance device is the point.
| nickburns wrote:
| Very well said.
| zdragnar wrote:
| > And from a product standpoint, there's really only one reason
| to ship a native app
|
| I have worked on several applications where the product
| managers wanted to make our web app something that could be
| installed through the app store, because that's how users
| expect to get apps.
|
| I know people who don't even type search queries or URLs into a
| browser, they just tell the phone what they want to find and
| open whatever shows up in a search result.
|
| I've tried pushing back against the native app argument and won
| once because customers actually reported liking that we had a
| website instead of an app, and other times because deploying an
| app through the stores was more work than anyone had time to
| take on. Otherwise, we would've been deploying through app
| stores for sure.
|
| Marketing gets plenty of data from google analytics or whatever
| platform they're using anyway, so neither they nor product
| managers actually care about the data from native APIs.
| forgotaccount3 wrote:
| > I know people who don't even type search queries or URLs
| into a browser, they just tell the phone what they want to
| find and open whatever shows up in a search result.
|
| I don't know exactly what you are talking about here, but if
| I wanted to find a restaurant that is local I definitely just
| type 'Miguels' into the browser and then it searches google
| for 'Miguels' automatically and it know's my location so the
| first result is going to be their website and phone number
| and I can load the website for the menu or just call if I
| know what my family wants.
|
| However even then, I'd rather have an app for them where I
| can enter in the items I want to order. I've noticed apps
| tend to be more responsive. Maybe it's just the coding
| paradigm that the applications tend to load all of the
| content already and the actions I take in the app are just
| changing what is displayed, but on a website they make every
| 'action' trigger an API call that requires a response before
| it moves on to the next page? This makes a big difference
| when my connection isn't great.
|
| I also find it easier to swap between active apps instead of
| between tabs of a browser. If I want to check on the status
| of the order or whatnot, it's easier to swap to the app and
| have that refresh then it is to click the 'tab' button of the
| browser and find the correct tab the order was placed in.
| computomatic wrote:
| >I definitely just type 'Miguels' into the browser
|
| So you open safari first. I think that's a step further
| than what's being described.
|
| Many people it's just "hey siri, book a table at Miguel's."
| And then click whatever app, web result, or native OS
| feature pops up.
|
| It's a chaotic crapshoot that I have never been able to
| stomach personally. For others, that's just called using
| their phone.
| zdragnar wrote:
| This is pretty much what I meant. Even if the browser is
| what comes up, the fact is the user isn't interacting
| with the browser as a browser. They're interacting with
| their phone through an app (voice => search). They don't
| understand website URLs, or what search engines are
| doing. That makes it harder for them to return
| (engagement metrics!) than tapping the icon on their
| phone that opens up directly to the app.
|
| It's also why so many websites try to offer push
| notifications or, back when it seemed like Apple wouldn't
| cripple it, the "add to home screen" or whatever CTA was
| that would set the website as an icon. Anything that
| gives the user a fast path back to engaging without
| having to deal with interacting with the browser itself
| is what PMs and marketing want.
| jmye wrote:
| I want to be really clear that I'm not trying to argue with
| your experience, just to understand it... but:
|
| > However even then, I'd rather have an app for them where
| I can enter in the items I want to order.
|
| Really? You want to download a different app for every
| restaurant you order from?
| windexh8er wrote:
| I recently took a trip to Hawaii, particularly Maui. I've
| never been before, but I hit the weather lottery and got to
| experience the Kona low system that raked the island with
| copious rain. Anyway... What I found, in the areas that we
| were staying, was that there were a lot of food trucks that
| looked to have great coffee, poke, food in general. But
| with the weather it was unclear if the food truck was 1)
| accessible 2) open due to other weather issues.
|
| What I found was that none of these food trucks (and even
| some relatively nice restaurants) had operational web
| pages. One had a domain but, for some apparent reason, they
| posted the menu to <some-random-name>.azurewebsites.net.
| And that page just... Didn't work. The rest got even worse.
| Most had listings on Google Maps, but the hours and
| availability did not reflect reality. We went to a coffee
| food truck that wasn't there, even though the day before
| they had commented on a review. Then we had others that had
| a link to an Instagram page of which some claimed to house
| their "current" hours and location, yet we tried going to
| two of them and both weren't open.
|
| It's 2026. If you have your business on Google Maps you
| should be able to update hours and availability quickly.
| But beyond that it costs almost nothing to host a simple
| availability page on a representative domain. And even if
| you don't want to deal with the responsibility of a domain,
| there are multitudes of other options. Now, I'm guessing
| that this isn't the norm for most of these vendors, at
| least I hope. But we weren't there during the worst of the
| rain, we hit the second low that went through in our
| timing. So while it was a significant amount of rain and
| some of the more treacherous switchback roads were closed -
| I'm talking about food trucks that were off of very
| accessible main roads & highways. My SO reached out via IG
| to about a half dozen vendors and only one responded 2 days
| later.
|
| Clearly tech and simple services like availability and
| location that is easy to update is not accessible (or
| known) for these types of businesses. But it definitely
| does not require an app (nor should it). Having these
| simple "status" sites would have made the friction the
| weather caused significantly less than what we experienced.
| I don't want an app when I'm trying to find out if a
| restaurant is open. I, personally, don't find apps any more
| responsive. In many cases a lot of web sites are littered
| with far too many components that are not required. I've
| been doing a lot with Datastar and FastAPI recently and
| some of the tools I've thrown together (that handle
| hundreds of MB of data in-browser) load instantly and are
| blazing fast. So much so that I've been asked how I "did
| that". It's amazing how fast a web app can be when it's not
| pulling data from 27 different sources and loading who
| knows what for JS.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there 's really only one reason to ship a native app when
| your content is just press releases and weather alerts_
|
| The flip side is there are (presumably) real people downloading
| these apps. Maybe it's a kid interested in a career in the FBI,
| or the family of someone who works there. Idk. (I thought it
| would contain a secure tip line or something, but the app seems
| to be a social-media front end first.)
|
| I am willing to entertain that there is a legitimate reason for
| an app to exist without conceding that it should be a pile of
| trash.
| p4coder wrote:
| Today morning, I was checking TSA wait times. Guess what, they
| want you to install their app to get the wait time. [1]
|
| [1](https://www.dhs.gov/check-wait-times)
| maartin0 wrote:
| In their defence, there is a fairly nice website too, not
| sure why it needs to have its own logo though
|
| https://bwt.cbp.gov/
| windexh8er wrote:
| That's border wait times, not what the OP was looking for.
|
| TSA _used to_ have an API [0]. But, of course while the
| deprecation page still lives on the service does not.
|
| Edit: Also looks like TSAWaitTimes.com [1] is an option,
| I'm sure their API works. o_O
|
| [0] https://www.dhs.gov/archive/mytsa-api-documentation [1]
| https://www.tsawaittimes.com/
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Quoth the Doctorow: "An app is just a website wrapped up in
| enough IP to make it a felony to modify it."
| varispeed wrote:
| Not sure if this is still a thing, but some apps used to embed
| libraries very much tracking everything you do on the phone,
| including your live location and that was then sold to third
| parties.
| bluepeter wrote:
| Relatedly, I just registered for PACER to download court
| documents. It's pretty shocking that to get public legal
| documents the US Federal Court system requires full name,
| birthdate, address, phone, email, credit card info... and I THINK
| (it's past the initial registration page so can't confirm 100%)
| also mother's maiden name and 2 common security questions. Just a
| treasure-trove of PII if it ever falls into the wrong hands.
| (What's esp frustrating is even after going through this, I had
| to call a number and wait on hold for 1 hour to activate the
| account.)
| shevy-java wrote:
| There is currently an attempt going on by several governments to
| crack down harder against the people. While before it was "only",
| say, California and their age-sniffing laws infiltrating and
| tainting Linux - thus declaring war against the people, as
| revealed by Meta acting as primary lobbyist here - today I read
| that now that age-sniffing was also approved in some european
| countries (in one EU country the parents are required to install
| a sniffing app and thus verify the age of the kids; I think it
| was in Greece. I'd never help any government act as fascist
| sniffing proxy trying to control and monitor by kids, that is an
| act of betrayal of such a government), their next line of attack
| is against VPN. Suddenly the picture shifts, because if VPNs are
| targeted, how does finding an excuse such as "but but but think
| about the kids", make any sense? That is very clearly governments
| becoming increasingly fascist. Add a few lobbyists here and there
| who benefit financially from this and now we suddenly understand
| how democracies are undermined. See also:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...
|
| Democracy needs to be adjusted - right now private interests can
| too easily sabotage and undermine it.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The recent spate of state-level age verification laws, while
| stupid, are primarily designed to insulate Facebook from
| lawsuits and not actually crack down on people. You can comply
| with them by just having a date field and an API to get
| bucketed age ranges out of them. The reason why they seem like
| a concerted crackdown is that Facebook can pay people to go to
| literally every legislature and bug them up and down[0] until
| they pass a law to make OS vendors provide age buckets.
|
| The _real shit_ is happening parallel to the actual
| legislation. Companies that need to comply with, say, the
| extremely onerous UK Online Services Act, are forcing everyone
| to use data-heavy verification paths like facial recognition
| age _estimation_ or ID scanning. Newgrounds just used your
| account age or a credit card.
|
| A core property of fascism is that, unlike other forms of
| tyranny, it is specifically a public-private joint venture. The
| government uses corporations to bypass its own constitutional
| restrictions, and those corporations then agree to follow rules
| that don't actually exist, specifically so that those
| corporations can shut down all their competition and form para-
| governments that supercede the democratically responsive bits.
| This has actually been going on for a while, but it's only now
| that the people are actually noticing it.
|
| [0] Inspired by Louis Rossmann's efforts to get R2R bills
| passed, I've started doing amateur lobbying for the Rio Grande
| Plan. It's surprisingly easy, but you will almost certainly
| have to take off from work or sacrifice many a lunch hour to be
| able to actually get to talk to people.
| maest wrote:
| FYI, regardless of election outcome, the next government is
| highly unlikely to roll this back
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _regardless of election outcome, the next government is
| highly unlikely to roll this back_
|
| Well yes, it's not a high priority. I'm not going to bring it
| up with my electeds. Are you? If everyone who thinks this is a
| huge deal is too lazy and nihilistic to do anything about it,
| it won't be prioritized.
| fhdkweig wrote:
| As long as it isn't mandatory like the Russian Max app, I
| wouldn't worry. The only reason to dislike it (other than
| privacy issues) is the money spent to develop it (which has
| already been spent).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_(app)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _only reason to dislike it (other than privacy issues) is
| the money spent to develop it (which has already been
| spent)_
|
| There are plenty of reasons to dislike it. The money spent
| to develp it. The attention spent to maintain it. The abuse
| of users' goodwill. Dilution of the FBI's brand with a
| circa 2008. None of these are good. None of them are,
| frankly, issues I'm going to personally engage on.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Most of this is bad, but I think it's reasonable for the FEMA
| app, whose purpose is to help you get to the nearest shelters, to
| have access to your location.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| These devices don't actually give access to biometric fingerprint
| data do they??
| cdrnsf wrote:
| Don't install these apps unless you absolutely have to. If you
| absolutely have to install them, uninstall them as soon as you're
| done using them.
| Daunk wrote:
| Heh. American funny
| thebeardredis wrote:
| Surprise... water is wet. Now bring in the NY Communist Times and
| the Bolshevik Broadcast Corp for a "differing view".
| mmethodz wrote:
| Which government?
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Title is missing the number 13, which makes it much harder to
| parse. Should be "Fedware: 13 Government Apps That Spy Harder
| Than the Apps They Ban"
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